A Method of Interpreting Chinese Traditional Everyday Artefacts in the Context of Sustainable Product Design

Zheng Yawei (2014)

 Many scholars and design professionals have advocated the significance and value of reapplying traditional design wisdom to solve contemporary design problems. This research attempts to realise this approach toward design innovation by investigating and describing the general process of how to derive design insights from traditional design wisdom and apply them for contemporary design purposes. The study takes a methodological approach toward investigating and describing the process of interpreting design insights from Chinese Traditional Everyday Artefacts (CTEAs) for the particular design context of sustainable product design (SPD), whereby a descriptive theoretical model is constructed using specific cognitive techniques to guide this interpretative process. The result identifies a new methodological approach to design as interpreting insights and provides substantial knowledge of interpretive thinking involved in the general design process. The provided method and cognitive techniques have been applied in workshops for research and educational functions for an empirical application.